Your post helped me see a contrast in my thinking when I'm usually railing at the latest offense.
I think it's easy to get lost in the depth of what they seem to be willing to tear apart and give in to hopelessness.
We need to take seriously what they intend and are able to do while understanding their limitations as people.
Trump is a master of gaming the system and manipulating media, a student of Roy Cohn and Vladimir PLutin.
Musk is a master of leveraging money, stealing other people's expertise, pretending he's a genius when he's really just good at amassing other people's money (starting with an inheritance, then he didn't invent Tesla, forced the people who did out, started making real money with Tesla when government incentives came along...most of his various companies' profits receive heavy government subsidies, and now in return for a social media company and some campaign donations he holds the purse-strings of the US govt.)
But neither is good at real estate or inventing things, or running governments.
Both are breath-takingly low functioning on a human relationship, emotional, and moral scale.
I think the latter will prove to matter more than we can imagine thus far.
Despots tend to overstep at some point and cause their own downfall. Hitler and Russia for example.
We have to expect that opportunity and be ready, even if we can't see it now. Especially now when we can't imagine how.
= new reply since forum marked as read